The Sheriff
Geri stood smiling behind the desk at the Selfridge Farmers Union. In the second aisle, on the bottom right corner sat two boxes of "Zotz" for $.39 They keep a box there for a hunter who comes down every year; they're her favorite. Under the counter sat paper bags of Tootsie Rolls marked for $1.00. The shop had a folksiness without the contrivances of Pinterest boards and trendy cafés. It was neighborly for its own sake, as though the town didn't know any other way to be.
I asked who I could talk to in town to get a feel for the place, hoping Geri herself would offer to talk. She demurred, "You'll want to talk to Frank over there. See that yellow house? He's in there. He'll probably be the best one to chat with; he's the sheriff."
Frank's house was patrolled by a shaggy black mutt that growled protectively at anything moving. His house was quaint, rugs hanging off the porch railings. A new black SUV with a crisp "SHERIFF" emblazoned on the side seemed out of place in the town of dirt roads and old pickup trucks. I rang the front doorbell, Frank came out of the garage. After answering a few wary questions and name dropping Geri from the Farmers Union, I got a window into the man who, for all intents and purposes, is the town of Selfridge himself.
“I grew up on a farm about 5 miles north of Selfridge. We had maybe a section and a half of land and that was our livelihood. I remember it was hard work. It wasn’t like today where they got machines to do everything. Back then you did everything by hand. We milked cows and we farmed wheat to sell.
Other than that there really wasn’t much to do as a kid besides work. Me and my friends rode horse every Sunday. We’d just ride until we had to go home, until milking time more or less. One lived about a mile and a half west, the other a mile and a half east. He’d come over, and we’d ride over to the next and just ride. That was about all we had time for.
I had a brother who passed when he was young and then two sisters. We all worked the farm until we graduated high school. That was just the way it was. After high school you could go do what you wanted to a point.”
In Frank's case, he wanted to get away a bit. When he was of age the Army offered him a chance to leave Selfridge. Frank, like many teenagers, wanted to see the world away from home for a while.
“I was in the regular army, infantry. I did my basic out in California, my Advanced Individual Training out in Fort Polk, Louisiana, and then I was sent to Germany. It was an experience.
When we grew up, we really didn’t get to do anything, just work on the farm. When I was in the service I got to go places, see people. Some were your best friend and some you could walk away from. Germany was nice, that was probably the best place I went. The country is beautiful; guesthouses all over, lot of forests, vineyards for miles and miles.”
This silo marks the entrance to Selfridge off Hwy 6
When he came back, his town was beginning to change.
“After I came back for good, I was on the farm about 4 years or so before my parents ended up selling it; they moved up to Mandan. Back then, even forty years ago there were dairy farms up and down the community. Now there are just one or two. Most people just sold out, quit.
Ya know, milking cows, it ain’t easy. There was no pipeline or milker. You had to sit down with a bucket, pump milk by hand. Nowadays you just hook it up and it goes into the tank. There’s not really that much to it after that. So the big farms took it up and for the rest it wasn’t worth it no more.”
“When I was growing up there was way more people here in town. Every house was full. It was a good community. But most of them now either moved or passed away. People moved up to Bismarck or Mandan because of the job situation. There wasn’t really any jobs here. Years ago they had a cheese plant up here on the corner and lots of people worked there but then that started to close down and people just went elsewhere to find work. So my parents went the way of the community: sold their farm and moved up north a bit.
It started around the 70s-80s, people moving out of the town. Then you’d get people that move in for a few months at a time. Not the best type of people, big drinkers mostly. The drugs weren’t bad back then but the booze was a big downfall. They’d come in for a few months then leave for another town in the area. That was about the time I joined the force.”
Frank was rooted in Selfridge and stayed anchored at a time when the town itself seemed to be floating away.
“I got into the police force more or less by accident; the town was looking for an officer and so I figured I’d join up. Had to go to officer school up in Bismarck. That’s tough. Every week they’d give you tests and if you flunked one, you’re out. So you had to hit the books.
Being an officer here was busy. We had 3 bars here at one time and they were busy pretty much 6 days a week. The most common calls were fights. Alcohol related. Two or three people get in an argument, pretty soon fists are flying. Then everybody wants to join in if they’ve got a little bit of booze in them. Back then people had more respect for law enforcement and when the cops showed up, they quit. That’s changed nowadays. You walk into a bar, you’d better be watching who’s behind or on your sides because it’s a different world.
But things were busy as the town changed. People were sorta tired of the sheriff prior. He was a drinker. And I personally saw him go out on calls where he was drunk. Some people approached me to run against him. I ran first and lost. About a year later he got himself in a big car accident, messed himself up, and eventually I got appointed. Been re-elected ever since for 26 years.”
The Branding Iron, a local Selfridge bar on Main St.
“I like working with people. A lot of times you don’t please them all, but the one person that you do - that makes you feel good.
I’ve got the whole county, 1100 square miles. I’m also the county coroner. You name it, I’m involved in it.
As sheriff, people expect you to be a role model. I have a lot of people that will come to the house and want to talk about their problems. Doesn’t matter if it’s 7:00AM or 10 at night. They expect you to be there for them and I try to be. I try to answer every call. And for me it can be pretty heavy. I have no deputies, it’s just me.”
He policed his county with a fatherly fervor for decades in relative peace. The town had changed from his youth, but it had found a groove. Things changed again with the arrival of oil - not for the better.
“Our biggest problem now is with meth. That came when oil hit the northern part of the state, that’s when we seen a big change. When the oil boom first started, they were getting people from you name it. They were all flocking in from all over and you’ve got the good people and the not so good folks. Lot of them introduced meth to the area.
Once the oil got established, the gangs came in. Gangs out of California, Florida. They were more or less setting up territory to sell to the oil workers.
It’s a toss-up about oil. Some people are for it but a lot of people are against it because they see what that oil did to the northern part of the state and they don’t want to see it happen to our community. I think that’s what set it off, was oil. The oil boom started off the drug problem in the community.”
The Farmers Union is gas station, convenience store, restaurant, and town hub
Frank has presided over the transition seen across the American Midwest with the arrival of oil. His unique challenge was the Standing Rock protests. His county, Sioux County is the home of the Standing Rock reservation and the site of the protest camp that drew national attention.
“When it first started it was a good initiative. But you’ve got California, Florida, Oregon - all these people rushing in and the local people lost control of it. And the people that came in, they didn’t care. I wish I had the pictures of what they did. You know they were here to “protect the water” but they didn’t give a shit about the land. They destroyed it.
When we cleared out the camps up there, it was beyond belief, the trash. There was thousands of tons of garbage. After about the third month they removed the porta-pottys and what did they do? They dug a big hole in the ground and used that. They didn’t care.
Someone sent a shipping container that was full from the back to the front with canned food. And where did it go? The garbage because it all froze.
There was a deer swimming in the river, and these people swam out and tried to drown that deer. They finally got them to shore, one guy pulls out a knife and starts stabbing him. One guy was pushing its head into the mud to kill him. For fun. That’s the kind of people that were here. They just didn’t care about nothing.
We cleared the camps, the only ones still here are the ones we have court cases with. They set up a camp down ten miles away.
It was a good cause. But these outsiders wrecked it. The people that came in weren’t here for the cause, they were here to disrupt. They cost places millions of dollars in cleanup, law enforcement. It was a disgrace. We couldn’t believe that people could do that.”
Asked about his hopes and fears, Frank's mind returned to his community as though he had long since sublimated himself to service of it's interests.
Frank sat on his front steps as we spoke
“I hope drugs get cleaned up a bit. They’re here to stay. You take one off the streets and there’s 10 to take their place. I really wish we could fix that but I’m worried there is none.
I’m happy with my life here though. It’s nice to know everyone you see. People will come up and talk to me like they’ve known me for years. I don’t know them but they seem to know me. They know I represent Sioux County. I’m happy to be that figure. I’ve arrested people and had people say “thank you” for stopping them being stupid. But that mantle is important. I’m happy to get to do it.”
